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Wii U criticism: Warranted or Unwarranted

Nintendo has started off the 8th (and potentially, finally) generation of home video game systems with the launch of their Wii U. The Wii U is the successor the very successful Wii system. Unfortunately however, now with the system out and available to the mass public, many opinions and criticisms have begun to formulate about the system. Both good and bad alike.

The Wii U launch had plenty of games for the system. Many heralded it as the best ever. However, there is a problem. Outside of a handful of games, most of the launch Wii U games are games that can already be found on either the PS3 or the 360 ranging from 6 months ot over a year ago. Now, does this paint a bad picture for the Wii U? Yes and no. Yes, because at the moment it paints the picture that the system is mostly a port machine at this point. And no, because the system is right now extremely new and literally every developer on it thus far has little to no experience on it.

The problem with the ports lies in the fact that they were never optimized or built properly for the Wii U in the first place. So even though most of the Wii U versions have updated content, it gets forced to take a step back because of the dip in quality. Powerful or not, this wouldn't be the blame of the Wii U. This would be the blame of every developer on it trying to use the Wii U as a quick cash grab for the holiday rush.

Next you have the GPU of the system. Unlike the game ports situation, this one is totally on Nintendo's head. The GPU clock speed of the Wii U is reportedly a great deal slower than the PS3 and 360 respective speeds. The GPU controls two things mostly. The game's texture loading speed and how many objects the game can handle on screen at one time. This would make playing games like the Dynasty Warrior series much more demanding on the Wii U than it would be on the other systems.

But people have to keep this in mind, Nintendo has always been about making profit off their system fast. So in turn, they never really pushed for the best technology in their systems. And the fact that they do this adds fuel to the fire of the Wii U being only marginally better than the PS3 or 360. And even though the lazy ports on developers parts don't make that case, Nintendo's own sub standard built in hardware does.

Various arguments can be made on both side. But in the end, Nintendo brought the mixed criticism upon itself with intentionally bringing a system with sub standard parts to the market. And at the same time, you have to remember, the system only just came out. Like any device, it's not about the power. It's about what the developers can do with it.